It’s a word that’s invaded Christian speech, but could I suggest a moratorium on this adjective, please? It’s for two reasons.
Firstly, ‘toxic’ is a lazy image. It’s like the word ‘nice’. I know it attempts to describe a situation as ‘dangerous’ in an invisible way, but it leaves the nature of that danger unclear. All it really tells me is that you didn’t like a situation. People might say that a particular church is ‘toxic’, or that a person was ‘toxic’, or that a marriage was ‘toxic’.
Doesn’t the Bible give us a bigger vocabulary for sin? Paul has various lists in which he catalogues different species of sin. Why not use them more? Why not say: ‘Those church leaders were domineering and bullying?’ Or ‘He failed to forgive’, or ‘She’s a gossip’?
